The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji)

by Murasaki Shikibu

  “Then go before dark, because I see no sign that the rain will let up.”

  Genji looked about him and saw through open sliding panels or behind standing curtains a crowd of some thirty gentlewomen dressed in varying shades of gray, light or dark, and with deep sorrow plain to see on their tearful faces. He was very moved.

  “It is a comfort that you will be calling here sometimes,” His Excellency said, “since one whom you will not wish to neglect remains behind; but these women who understand so little are grieving, and who could blame them? They imagine that you are now leaving your home forever, and the prospect of losing the occasional pleasure of your presence, to which these years have accustomed them, troubles them more than the sorrow of our common loss. You were never at ease with her,” he went on, weeping, “but alas, I always kept up hope. Yes, this is a sad evening, it is indeed.”

  “Their sorrow shows how little they know me. There may indeed have been times when I deprived her of my company, even as I took it for granted that somehow all would be well, but now I have, if anything, less reason to neglect this house than before. You will see, I promise.”

  He then took his leave. His Excellency went to Genji's room after seeing him off. It was as it had always been, to the last detail of its furnishings, but to His Excellency it was as empty as a cicada's cast-off shell.

  An inkstone lay abandoned before the curtained bed. The young gentle-women must have smiled through their sadness to watch him examine the pieces of practice calligraphy left nearby, wiping his eyes as he did so. Genji had jotted down moving old poems, Chinese and Japanese, in a rapid cursive, in characters square and formal, and in various other unusual styles. How beautifully he writes! His Excellency exclaimed to himself, lifting his gaze skyward. He must have been very sorry indeed to have lost Genji as a son-in-law.

  Where Genji had written the line “Who will now share with me our old pillow, our covers…”67 he had added,

  “Her departed soul must feel yet deeper sorrow for this bed we shared,

  when it is beyond me still to leave it and go away.”

  And beside “The frost flowers are white,”

  “Now that you are gone, I have lain so many nights, brushing off the dew,

  on our gillyflower bed covered now only with dust!”68

  He must have had in mind the pinks of the other day, because among the papers there were withered ones.

  “Far be it from me to understate our loss,” His Excellency said when he showed them to Her Highness, “but I take comfort from the thought that sorrows like this one visit us all and that the old tie69 that briefly brought her to us, apparently only to cause us pain, may have been more cruel than kind. As the days go by, though, and I miss her more, it seems just too hard that the Commander should be soon to become a stranger. Whenever he stayed away and failed to come for a day or two, I looked forward to his return, and once his light is gone from my life, I do not know how I will be able to go on!” He sobbed so openly that the more mature of Her Highness's women were overcome, and on this dismally chilly evening they, too, burst into tears.

  The younger ones meanwhile clustered together here and there in sad conversation. “Just as His Excellency says,” they observed, “I do not doubt that having the young master to look after is a great comfort, but even he can hardly make up for the lady who left him behind.” Others were saying, “I plan to go home for a while; I will be back later on.” There were many touching scenes as one and all said good-bye to one another.

  “You are awfully thin,” His Eminence observed sympathetically when Genji called on him—“all those days spent fasting, I suppose.”70 He had Genji dine in his own presence and showered him with the most touching attentions.

  When Genji called on Her Majesty, the gentlewomen there looked on him with wonder. Through Ōmyōbu she asked, “How have you been all this time, which for me, too, has been so filled with sorrow?”

  “I knew in a general way how precarious life is, but seeing it with my own eyes has upset and repelled me, and until today only your kind messages have sustained me.” His manner was even more sadly subdued than in the past. In mourning, wearing an unpatterned formal cloak over a gray train-robe and with the pendant tails of his headdress rolled, he was more beautiful than in his most brilliant finery. He spoke of how concerned he was at not having seen the Heir Apparent for so long, and the night was well advanced when at last he withdrew.

  Every room at Nijō was spic-and-span, and the whole staff, men and women alike, awaited his arrival. The senior gentlewomen were all back, and seeing each of them dressed and made up to her best advantage recalled to him with a pang the sorrowing company that he had just left. He changed and went straight to the west wing. The curtains and furnishings for the new season were bright and gay,71 the handsome young gentlewomen and page girls, with their graceful airs and ways, made a most agreeable sight, and Shōnagon's warm welcome pleased him greatly.

  His young lady was dressed extremely prettily. “See what a big girl you are, now I have been away so long!” He lifted her little standing curtain to see her, and her looks as she bashfully turned away were beyond reproach. Her profile in the lamplight, her hair—everything told him that she would exactly resemble that other lady for whom he pined, and he was overjoyed.

  He sat beside her and described what had happened while he was gone.72 “I so look forward to telling you all about it,” he said, “but all that would be too much now. I shall go and rest a little first and then be back. I shall be seeing so much of you now that you may grow tired of me!”

  Shōnagon was pleased to hear all this, but she still worried about him. That may not have been very nice of her, but he kept up with so many great ladies that she was afraid a new one might now appear and ruin everything.

  Genji returned to his own apartments, where he had the gentlewoman Chūjō rub his legs before he fell asleep. The next morning he sent off a letter for his little son. The sorrowful reply filled him with melancholy.

  With so little to occupy him now he remained very pensive, but he could not yet muster the ambition to set out on casual evening calls. It was a pleasure to see that his young lady had turned out to be all he could wish, and since he judged that the time had now more or less come, he began to drop suggestive hints; but she showed no sign of understanding.

  He spent whole days with her, whiling away the time at Go or at character-guessing games,73 and such were her wit and grace, so enthralling in quality her every gesture, that after those years of forbearance while her charm had offered nothing more, he could endure it no longer; and so despite his compunction it came to pass one morning, when there was nothing otherwise about their ways with each other to betray the change, that he rose early while she rose not at all.

  “What can be the matter?” her women asked each other anxiously. “She must not be feeling herself.”

  Before leaving he put a writing box beside her, inside her curtains.74 At last, when there was no one nearby, she lifted her head and found a knotted letter at her pillow. Opening it uncomprehendingly, she read,

  “Ah, what distances kept us so strangely apart, when night after night

  we two yet lay side by side in our overlapping clothes.”

  He seemed to have dashed it off with the greatest of ease. She had never suspected him of such intentions, and she could only wonder bitterly why in her innocence she had ever trusted anyone with such horrid ideas.

  Toward midday he returned. “You seem to be ill. What is wrong, then? Today will be no fun if we cannot play Go.” He peeped in: she was still lying with the bedclothes over her head. The gentlewomen drew back as he went to her. “Why will you not talk to me? You do not like me after all, do you. Your gentlewomen must be wondering about all this.” He pulled the covers off her and found her drenched in perspiration. Even the hair at her forehead was soaking wet. “Oh, dear, we cannot have this! What a fuss you are making!” She was still furious with him, though, despite his attem
pts to console her, and she refused him a single word in reply. “Very well, then,” he said reproachfully, “I will not come anymore. I feel quite unwanted.” He opened the writing box and peered inside, but there was nothing in it. What a little girl she still is! He contemplated her fondly. He spent the whole day trying to make her feel better, and her refusal to yield only made her more precious.

  That evening they were brought baby boar cakes.75 The event was nothing elaborate, since Genji was in mourning, and the cakes were served only there in the west wing. When he saw them in all their colors, presented in pretty, cypress boxes, he went out to the front of the house and called Koremitsu. “Bring me cakes like these tomorrow evening, although not nearly so many. Today was not lucky.”76

  Koremitsu, always so quick, noted his smiles and caught his meaning instantly. He asked no questions but only said with a perfectly straight face, “Certainly, my lord, a new couple should of course choose the right day to have them. How many baby rat cakes should I provide?”77

  “About a third as many should do.” Koremitsu, who understood him perfectly, withdrew. He certainly knows his way about! Genji thought. Koremitsu said nothing to anyone, and he all but made the cakes himself, at home.

  Genji, at his wits' end to placate his darling, was highly amused to feel as though he had just stolen a bride. What she used to mean to me is nothing compared to what she means to me now! he reflected. How unruly the heart is! I could not bear one night away from her!

  Discreetly, very late at night, Koremitsu brought the cakes that Genji had ordered. He was acutely aware that Shōnagon, who was older, might embarrass Genji's young lady, so he called for her daughter, Ben. “Take them these, quietly.” He handed her the cakes in an incense jar box.78 “They are to celebrate a happy event, and you are to put them beside the pillow. Be careful, now, do not do anything wrong.”

  “But I have never done anything wrong like that,” Ben said in surprise as she took them.79

  “Actually, avoid that word for now. Just don't use it.”80

  Ben was too young to grasp what he meant, but she delivered the cakes, slipping them in through the standing curtain by their pillows. No doubt it was as always Genji who explained them.

  The gentlewomen knew nothing of all this, but when Genji had the box removed early the next morning, those closest to their mistress understood what had happened. Where could those dishes have come from? The little carved stands were so delicate and the cakes themselves so beautifully made—it was all as pretty as could be.81 Shōnagon, who had never dreamed Genji would go this far, 82 dissolved in tears of gratitude before such evidence of his unstinting devotion.

  “I do wish he had quietly told us, though,” the women whispered to each other. “What can that man of his have thought?”

  Thereafter Genji missed her and worried about her whenever he called a moment at the palace or at His Eminence's, so much so that his feelings surprised even him. He was not insensitive to the bitter complaints addressed to him by the ladies he was visiting, but he was so reluctant to hurt his new wife by being away a single night that he arranged things to look as though he were ill. “I shall begin going out once I am again ready to face the world” was the only kind of answer he gave them.

  The Mistress of the Wardrobe still had her heart set only on Genji, and the Empress Mother83 did not at all like the feelings that His Excellency their father expressed on the subject. “After all,” he would say, “I see nothing wrong with her having what she wants, now that I gather that proud wife of his is no more.” The Empress Mother, to whom there was nothing dishonorable about her sister's entering palace service as long as she did so with dignity, was determined to offer her to His Majesty.

  Genji, who was so fond of her, found this prospect thoroughly disappointing, but he was in no mood just now to divide his affections. Why do that? He had learned, to his cost, the value of caution. Life is short enough as it is, he reflected, and besides, I have made my choice. I should never have provoked jealousy.

  Clothing frame

  As to the Rokujō Haven, her plight affected him very much, but things would never go well if he acknowledged her formally, whereas she was just the woman to discuss things with now and again, if she would only let him go on seeing her as in the past. He could not bring himself to give her up even now.

  It occurred to him that society still did not know who his new love was, and that that reflected poorly on her; and he decided accordingly to inform His Highness her father. He invited a chosen few to a donning of the train that he planned to bring off more amply than usual—which was all very well, except that she had now taken a keen dislike to him. She so bitterly rued giving him all those years of trust and affection that she would not even look him properly in the eye, and she displayed only aversion for his lightest remark. The change that had come over her both amused and pained him. “Those years when I was so fond of you have all gone to waste,” he would complain, “and the way you keep yourself from me hurts me very much!” On this note the New Year came.

  On the first day of the year he called first, as usual, on His Eminence, then on His Majesty and the Heir Apparent. After withdrawing from the palace he went on to His Excellency's. New Year or not, His Excellency was deep in forlorn reminiscences, and Genji's arrival just then overwhelmed every effort of his to master his emotions. The passing years seemed to have conferred on Genji still greater dignity of presence and looks even more dazzling than before.

  When he left His Excellency to visit the rooms of the lady he had lost, the gentlewomen there were overcome by the joy of his rare visit. He found that his little son had grown a great deal, and the boy's ready smiles were very touching. He shared the Heir Apparent's eyes and mouth, which gave Genji a twinge of alarm that others might wonder at the resemblance. Everything was as it had been, and there were robes hanging as ever on their frames, but the absence of anything belonging to a woman cast a pall over it all.

  He received a note from Her Highness. “Today I have been striving to contain my sorrow,” she wrote, “but I can no longer do so now that you have been good enough to call.” She continued, “My eyes have been so dim all these months with weeping that the clothing I have made you, as I always used to do, may look very dull, but I hope that at least today you will condescend to wear it.”

  The exquisite items that accompanied this message joined the others already on the frames. In color and workmanship the train-robe she wished him to have was so exceptional that he knew he could not let it go unappreciated, and he put it on. He understood with a rush of sympathy how disappointed she would have been if he had failed to come. He wrote in reply, “I came to remind you that spring is here, but so many memories crowd through me now that I hardly know what to say.

  For so many years you have renewed on this day the bright hues I wear,

  and now I don them again, I feel my tears fall like rain.

  My heart is overflowing.”

  She answered,

  “There is nothing new in the coming of the year, only an old rain:

  the tears an aging mother sheds for all that she has lost.”

  And they did indeed have reason to mourn.

  10

  SAKAKI

  The Green Branch

  Sakaki, a broadleaf evergreen tree, figures in Shinto ritual, hence in this chapter's best-remembered scene: Genji's visit to the Rokujō Haven at the Shrine on the Moor. She reproaches him when he arrives and slips a branch of sakaki under her blinds:

  “When no cedar trees stand as though to draw the eye by the sacred fence,

  what strange misapprehension led you to pick sakaki?”

  He replies,

  “This was where she was, the shrine maiden, that I knew, and fond memories

  made the scent of sakaki my reason to pick a branch.”

  His sakaki branch gave the chapter its title.

  RELATIONSHIP TO EARLIER CHAPTERS

  “The Green Branch” follows “Heart-t
o-Heart” in unbroken narrative sequence, from the ninth month of that year, when Genji is twenty-three, to the summer a year and a half later, when he is twenty-five.

  PERSONS

  Genji, the Commander of the Right, age 23 to 25

  The Rokujō Haven, 30 to 32 (Rokujō no Miyasudokoro)

  The High Priestess of Ise, daughter of the Rokujō Haven, 14 to 16 (Akikonomu)

  His (Late) Eminence, the Retired Emperor, dies when Genji is 23 (Kiritsubo In)

  Her Majesty, the Empress, then Her Cloistered Eminence, 28 to 30 (Fujitsubo)

  The Heir Apparent, her son, 5 to 7 (Reizei)

  His Majesty, the Emperor, 27 to 29 (Suzaku)

  The Empress Mother, daughter of the Minister of the Right (Kokiden)

  His Excellency, the Minister of the Right, grandfather of the Emperor (Udaijin)

  His Highness of War, brother of Fujitsubo and father of Murasaki, 38 to 40 (Hyōbukyō no Miya)

  Ōmyōbu, a gentlewoman in the service of Fujitsubo

  The Mistress of the Wardrobe, then Mistress of Staff, daughter of the Minister of the Right (Oborozukiyo)

  His Excellency, the Minister of the Left, resigns when he is 59 and Genji is 25 (Sadaijin)

  The mistress of Genji's west wing, 15 to 17 (Murasaki)

  Shōnagon, Murasaki's nurse

  The lady of the bluebells, the High Priestess of the Kamo Shrine (Asagao)

  Chūjō, a gentlewoman in the service of Asagao

  Chūnagon, a gentlewoman in the service of Oborozukiyo

  The Fujiwara Lieutenant, brother of the Shōkyōden Consort